


Rescuing a Wounded Bird

by completelyhopeless



Series: Detective Grayson and Forensic Batgirl [9]
Category: DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe, Case Fic, Comment Fic, Community: comment_fic, F/M, Gen, Injury, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 02:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3157928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completelyhopeless/pseuds/completelyhopeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barbara narrows down the search for where Dick could be. Dick gets more holes in his memories, but it might not matter as long as he's free and doesn't die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rescuing a Wounded Bird

**Author's Note:**

> So, before, when I was stuck on this series, Shanachie gave me some prompts, among which were "Jason & Babs finding Dick."
> 
> And then among today's prompts was _[DCU Dick/Babs 'You weren't supposed to get it wet.'](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/588781.html?thread=82039789#t82039789)_
> 
> I started filling that, it became part of this universe, and it helped get this section done.

* * *

“You expect us to search every one of those buildings? Red, you are crazier than I thought.”

“I'm not,” Barbara muttered. She adjusted her glasses as she shifted her tablet, trying to adjust it against the glare from the sun. She hadn't wanted to do this in her lab despite its better equipment, not wanting to risk someone connected to Kowlinski interrupting them as well as wanting to be closer to the site. She was almost done. “We're not searching all of them. We need a bit more to narrow down the hunt.”

Jason snorted. “It might actually be faster to go search them all.”

“You have no patience,” Barbara told him. “Look, first I found all the locations where the traffic cameras were out, and with that area narrowed down, we know that he is in one of those buildings because those cameras are still out. They'll stay out until he is ready to leave. That means Dick is still here. We have a good view of the street. I don't see Maroni's car down there, which means either there is somewhere he can park it out of sight or he's using a different car from the one we traced to him before. He's arrogant enough not to switch them, but then he got to Dick somehow, too, and Dick would have known to watch for that car.”

“Unless, like you said, I unnerved him.”

She rolled her eyes. “You made him hyper-vigilant. He should have seen the car.”

“He still got caught. He missed something.”

She ignored that. “There. That building. It finally tracked back to one of Zucco's many shell companies—and the original plans for this building included an underground parking garage. That's where we want to go, because that is where he would hold Dick.”

“Huh. Guess I was right. You did find him,” Jason said, and she frowned at him. He grinned at her, and then he took a running leap across over to the other rooftop.

She shook her head, muttering curses as she gathered up her stuff and started down to the ground level in a more sensible way. She wanted Dick back, too, but she wasn't going to get herself or anyone else killed while she did it.

* * *

“Don't they teach you not to underestimate your enemy?” Dick asked, frowning at the blurry form of the child across from him. He couldn't see much from here, and he couldn't move any closer. “You knew I was injured, yeah, but that's not a good reason to let your guard down and take me off that pillar. That is a _very_ bad idea, and I'm surprised it was yours.”

“You were of no value to me dead,” the boy said. “I needed to treat your wounds.”

“Yeah. How's that working out for you?”

The kid glared at him, and Dick managed a small smile, putting a hand over his side. He was going to puke again, and the kid's patch job hadn't been finished when Dick woke and his usual PTSD response kicked in and he threw something at the kid. He didn't know what, but it was enough to knock the young assassin off-balance. Survival instinct and that damned fight or flight response had done the rest. He had better instincts than he wanted in that respect.

Sometimes it didn't pay to live, regardless of what he still had left to do.

He needed to live to take down whoever was behind Maroni and what they'd done to this kid, but his body did not want to let him do it. His mind was close to agreeing with his body. The pain was bad, he knew he wasn't walking out of here on his own, and he couldn't calculate how much blood he'd lost, but he knew it wasn't good.

Dick didn't pretend to understand why the kid had kept him alive. Maroni had an obsession with him, his “Robin,” but that shouldn't extend to his latest project. Maybe it was a good sign that the boy didn't seem to want to kill him, but at the moment, the pain disagreed with him. He would rather be unconscious. Maybe even dead.

He needed to stop thinking that way. Hard when his vision kept darkening, but he wasn't done, and he wasn't alone. The kid hadn't killed him. That was something. He didn't know what it was yet, but he needed to use it. To do that, he had to live.

“Your wounds are not closed. You will bleed out.”

“I know. Not my ideal way of dying, but if it's how I go, then it's how I go,” Dick said, letting out a breath. “Might even be the way you go. You should probably rethink that whole sword thing.”

“You should not have been capable of using it at all.”

Dick laughed. “Someone needs to warn my enemies that I turn into an unthinking but highly dangerous trained killer when I'm out of my head. Then again... maybe they shouldn't.”

“Your programming still exists, then. Curious.”

“How is it we are having an almost normal conversation?” Dick asked. “Everything should be slurred and incoherent.” 

“You are incoherent. You are also going to lose conscious again.”

“So are you,” Dick said, not sure why that made him feel proud, but he was, strangely. “You feel like telling me your name before you do?”

“No.”

“Figured,” Dick muttered, letting his eyes close again so that the pain would leave for a while.

* * *

“In here.”

Barbara looked at him, but Jason just smiled, holding the door open. She tried to tell herself he wasn't crazy, but she still had her doubts. She'd played them off, made them nothing for her father's sake, but she wasn't stupid. She knew she couldn't trust Jason completely. Still, she knew it was better to have him with her than loose on his own, rampaging through the city and killing anyone he thought wasn't helping him find Dick.

“You find him?”

“Found a mess.”

She swallowed, pushing herself forward before Jason could. She didn't know that she wanted to see this mess, but she wasn't a coward. She would do what needed to be done, even if that was just calling in an ambulance to take away Dick's body.

She shook the thought off, following Jason around the corner. He pushed open a second door. “You got any first aid training?”

“I'm not that kind of doctor,” she said, but she stepped past the rotting doorway and went inside. This should have been an apartment building once, but all the walls between the rooms and units seemed to have crumbled, leaving only a few pieces of wood and brick behind where the load bearing beams still stood.

One of them had seen use recently, but not to support a wall. She saw a chain and a smear down the pillar, and she would have been sick if she wasn't a cop's daughter, following the trail down to the floor and the bodies that went with that blood.

She should have gone to the kid first, but she didn't, kneeling down next to Dick instead. She touched a hand to his head first, checking the wound. She thought it was older, but this wasn't her field of expertise. “Dick.”

“I'd say he got himself whacked over the head,” Jason said. “Among other things.”

“You didn't find any sign of that when Dick disappeared. No blood. Nothing to go on, remember?”

“I think... he... right,” Dick said, eyes opening slightly. “I had something, I think. Put it in... Babs?”

“Just rest. I don't think you know what you're saying,” she told him, pushing his shirt out of the way so that she could examine the wound in his side. She frowned. “Who stitched this?”

“Kid.”

“That kid?” Jason demanded. He shook his head. “Dickie-bird, honestly. I know you like strays, that you seem as willing as Alfred is to take us in, but I think you almost killed that one.”

Barbara turned back to look at the boy. “No. Dick, you didn't—”

“I might have. Reflex. And... he did kind of try to kill me.”

“Before or after stitching you up?” Barbara asked. She didn't understand this. Dick was injured, but even with that, his story didn't make sense. “Never mind. You can tell us later when you're not bleeding and are more than half-conscious.”

“Where's Maroni? He was here, wasn't he? Please tell me the kid didn't do that to you alone. That's just sad.”

Dick shook his head. “Maroni first, kid second, Maroni third.”

“Explains why you're a mess,” Barbara told him. She shook her head. “We have to get you out of here and to a hospital—”

“No.”

“Dick—”

“Remember what I said about him throwing knives when he's disturbed? You can't take this idiot to a hospital. Alfred might be gone, but the shelter isn't. We can take him there,” Jason said. “We better go now. If Maroni walked away from this and didn't take this kid with him, he'll be back.”

“Tried to cage me again, Jason. Can't...”

“Shut up, Dickie-bird. We're getting you out of here.”

* * *

_Dick leaned back against the bars and shuddered. He wanted out of here. He wanted to be free. He couldn't stand this cage. It was cold. It was wrong. He was stuck, trapped. He couldn't move, couldn't hardly breathe because of the smell—he didn't know what it was, but it made him feel sick._

_“Let me out. Please.”_

_“And lose my favorite little bird? I don't think so. Our work is coming along nicely, don't you think? You are so close to being perfect, and we'll get you there.”_

_“No. I am not your bird and I am not—No! Don't come near me! Don't touch me! Just let me go. Please.”_

_“When will you learn to stop begging?”_

_Dick knew he was crying. He'd thought he wouldn't cry anymore, not after as much as he'd cried since his parents died and the man stuck him in the cage. He should be all done with tears. “I wouldn't beg if you would just stop. Either let me go or kill me but stop this.”_

_“And give up my bird? No.”_

* * *

“Where did you learn to do all this?” Barbara asked, watching Jason work. He had a different intensity to him now as he bent over Dick. He cleaned each wound carefully, first with water and then with antiseptic. She'd think he was a trained professional if she hadn't met him as a psychopath with a gun, though she supposed the concepts weren't necessarily exclusive.

“Alfred. Some of it was taking care of this idiot. And some of it was training I got as a kid. They wanted me killing things, not patching them up, but to be effective, you had to know a thing or two about anatomy.”

She nodded. The best killers were knowledgeable about the human body. They knew the quickest, most efficient ways to neutralize it. They were good at what they did, didn't need fancy weapons or tricks to kill a man in an instant.

“What about the kid?” Barbara asked, glancing toward him. “Something knocked him unconscious, too.”

“Dick's worse. He wasn't trying to hurt the kid with what he did, even if he's good at it when he's mostly out of his head,” Jason said. He finished stitching up the wound that the boy had started. “I think that might have been Maroni.”

“Dick did say he got him twice,” Barbara agreed, moving over to the boy's side. She let out a breath. “I don't understand why they had to use kids.”

“They're killers. Who cares?”

“Some killers have a sense of morality,” Barbara reminded him. Jason happened to be one of them, at least so far. He was crazy, but not completely out of control. Dick was right about him, at least to a point. “There are plenty of them who draw the line at killing kids. And they'd draw the line at using them as weapons, too.”

“Speaking of kids as weapons,” Jason said, grabbing hold of her arm, “don't think that one isn't. Don't get yourself fooled because he's cute while he's sleeping. That kid is just as dangerous as I am if not more, Red.”

“He needs help, too. We can't just ignore him because Dick means more to us than he does.”

“Oh, so Dickie-bird means something to you,” Jason said with a grin. He pulled her back toward Dick. “Go ahead. Give sleeping ugly a little kiss.”

She pushed away from him. “That is not funny. Dick and I are not—”

Jason shoved her, and she saw him grab hold of the kid, closing a hand over his throat as he slammed him back into the other bed. “Try it, kid. I'll make you pay for every drop of blood that he lost and more.”

The kid spat at him, and Barbara rolled her eyes. Again. She was stuck as the babysitter to a bunch of children. Assassins, but children. She shook her head, pulling on the man's arm, weakening his hold on the boy. “Jason, stop it. You don't have to go that far. He needs medical attention. Does Maroni use drugs to control these kids?”

“No.”

“Good,” she said, giving the boy a sedative and catching him when he went slack in Jason's hold. “Now we will treat him and Dick and keep them both alive. Maroni got away again, remember? We need the kid to get answers. You are not going to kill him.”

“Not yet, anyway.”

* * *

“Don't move.”

Dick didn't want to. Everything hurt, and he would have wanted to go back to sleep, but he knew that there was no rest in his dreams. He didn't want to go back to them. Not now, not ever. He wasn't going to rest.

“Jason. You idiot.”

“I'm not the one bleeding. You are. Do you know how long it took me to stitch you up? You owe me,” Jason said, turning back from the other bed. “Gotta watch this punk. He attacks on sight. I'd almost scored you a wake up kiss from Red over there, but he had to ruin things.”

Dick rolled his eyes. Jason was an idiot. Babs wouldn't have kissed him. He might have wanted that—it was a lot better of a dream than the ones he'd been having, but he knew she wasn't interested in him like that. “Maroni?”

“Gone.”

“No,” Dick said, shaking his head. “He shouldn't have been able to walk away. Kid got him with the sword. Should have been a fatal wound. Even if it wasn't...”

_Stitches hurt. He felt the needle go in and the needle went out, and then the needle flew and a kid was flying and a sword sliced and blood splattered—_

“Dick,” Babs said, and he felt her hand on his arm, giving him a shake. He didn't remember passing out, but he must have slipped out for at least a moment, judging from the expression on her face and Jason's.

“How long...”

“Just a few minutes. Scared Red good, though.”

“Stop calling me that,” Barbara said, elbowing him. She turned back to Dick. “We don't know where Maroni is. He wasn't with you or the kid. That boy is our only link to the people Maroni was working for.”

“Not the only one.”

She frowned. “What have you got?”

“Jacket pocket,” Dick said, though he didn't know why he'd still have his jacket if his wounds had been treated. He didn't feel like looking for it because he still wasn't up to moving. “Was on Maroni. Took it from him when the kid disabled him.”

“And this is the key to everything?” Barbara asked, lifting up his coat and rummaging through the pockets. “You should have retired this coat years ago, Grayson.”

“Don't,” Dick choked out, trying to sit up and catch hold of her before she could do anything to the coat. “Be careful with that. It's evidence.”

“The coat is trash," she said. "The notebook is another story. You're a detective. You know better. You're not supposed to get evidence wet.”

“It's not like I dropped it in water,” Dick said, covering his side again. The cut stung, and he was starting to think that Maroni had dipped the blade which meant that Babs needed to analyze his blood and see what was in it.

“Like soaking it in blood is any better,” Babs said, shaking her head. “You scared me, Dick, you know that? And I don't do scared. You are not allowed to do this to me.”

He took her hand. “It wasn't my intention to get caught or to get hurt. I still don't know how he managed to sneak up on me. It's like before, when my parents died. There are so many missing pieces. I only hope some of them are in that book.”

“I'll take care of this,” she promised, leaning down to kiss his forehead. “You just rest.”


End file.
